The Halloran deal collapses overnight.
By morning, three Spire+ acquisitions partners have ducked Crew's calls. By afternoon, the trades have a story up titled The One's Showrunner in the Crosshairs After Sponsor Sting at Beverly Hilton. By evening, Crew has me stand outside his office at the production lot for six hours.
PAs walk past. Assistants walk past. The eyes go from amused to sympathetic to embarrassed for me. The grip who's worked on the show three seasons takes off his hat as he passes, like he's at a funeral.
Tate comes out at hour five. Her cheek is still pink under the foundation. She is carrying a thick clipped stack of paper.
She drops it at my feet.
"Wren. Pick it up."
I bend. I gather the pages. I straighten.
She knocks it out of my hand.
I bend again. I gather. I straighten.
The third time, before I can bend, she sets the toe of her Common Projects on top of the stack.
She tilts her head. "You're good at the pathetic look. Aren't you going to cry?"
The office door opens.
Crew is in the frame.
Tate snaps her foot back. "Crew — I was helping her—"
Crew doesn't look at Tate. He looks at me. "In."
I follow him.
The door clicks closed. He drops a contract on the desk between us.
"Sutherland Productions back catalog. You're signing it over to Thorne Media. Today."
I look at the cover page.
It is my father's life. Thirty years of indie features, six Sundance jury prizes, the IP library that built the production company he just lost. The collateral that paid for my mother's house, my college, the production company my dad cried at his own birthday over because he loved it more than money.
In the source, I sign it.
In the source, my dad has a stress stroke in the bankruptcy hearing the next morning, and my mom calls me from the ICU and I say Mom, I love Crew. The family should help him.
Crew leans back in his Eames. "Sign it, and we honor the engagement publicly. Live finale, big choreographed proposal redo, ring-cam, whole package."
I pick up the pen. "Really?"
He laughs. "Wren. Do you have any other moves?"
I laugh too. Small. "No."
The pen scratches.
Family Sacrifice Score +30.
I slide the contract back across the desk.
Crew folds it into his jacket like a receipt. "Good. Now come visit Cass at Cedars with me. She's not feeling well."
My finger stops.
"What."
He shrugs. "She spiked a fever last night. Probably stress. She's at Cedars overnight."
It is not stress.
I drift my hand toward my wrist where the bracelet would be if I were the one who had to wear it, and then realize I do not, and that the spike fell on hers.
Cedars-Sinai, Suite 4-East. Cass is sitting up in a hospital bed in one of her own pajama tops because she refuses to wear gowns. Her IV is in her left wrist. Her right wrist, where the bracelet sits, has a half-dollar of red skin pulsing under it.
She looks at me. "Did you sign?"
I nod.
Her eyes flash. "Crew. I'm going to kill you in your sleep."
Crew, in the doorway, sighs like a tired father. "Cass. How long are you going to do this for her?"
Cass pulls the IV needle out of her wrist with her teeth. A small ruby bead beads up.
"Crew."
She looks at him. Each word goes in like a thumbtack.
"I'm not doing this for her. I'm disgusted by you."
Cass's three words cost Crew three nights of sleep.
The Feed runs me a stat-line every morning while I drink the espresso I can't taste.
Male Lead — Bombshell Fixation: 52%.
Male Lead — Bombshell Possession Index: 61%.
Male Lead — Emotional Variance: critical.
I read them in the hallway at Cedars, watching the door to my dad's room. My dad is sixty-two. He had a stress-induced cardiac event during the bankruptcy review yesterday. The cardiologist used the phrase minor episode, significant warning. He is currently sedated and on a heart monitor.
My mother — Maggie — is in the hallway with me. She is sixty in a Loft cardigan and there are new white hairs at her temples.
When I get close to hug her, she lifts her hand and slaps me clean across the face.
"Wren. That catalog is your father's life."
My cheek burns. The monitor beep on the other side of the door keeps time.
Family Severance Beat: complete.
My mother is sobbing.
"You sold your father's company to that boy? For what? For the engagement?"
I can't explain.
If I do, the bracelet trips. Cass is two floors down.
I kneel on the linoleum. I press my forehead to the floor. There is no production crew this time.
"Mom. I'm sorry."
Maggie steps back from me.
"I don't have a daughter who does this."
Inside the room my father's heart monitor keeps its pace.
I stand. I leave.
I make it to my car. My phone rings before I have the door closed.
Crew. Soho House. Now.
I sit in the driver's seat. I close my eyes.
"My dad is in the ICU."
He laughs in the back of his throat. "Ren. You already picked me, remember? Don't pretend to be a good daughter on a deadline."
I clench my jaw.
"Okay."
Soho House West Hollywood, the roof, a long banquette of Crew's friends — second-generation studio sons, two podcast bros, an associate at his agency. They cheer when I walk in.
"There she is — the fiancée."
"Fiancée when Crew feels like it, right?"
Crew slides a glass to the edge of the table. "Drink that."
I haven't eaten. My stomach is a hole.
I take the glass. I drink it down.
The whiskey goes through me the way Don Julio did. My vision swims.
Someone laughs. "Sutherland really is well-trained."
Crew isn't looking at me.
Crew is staring at his phone.
Cass has just posted to her main, six hundred thousand followers, a photo of her IV drip with the caption Some people are so dirty they make me physically nauseous.
Crew's face goes the color of an autopsy.
He stands up. He picks up his keys and his jacket.
He walks out, leaving me alone in his banquette.
I know where he's going.
He is going to Cass.
The booth fills with more whiskey and fewer manners.
One of the podcast guys pours a finger of bourbon down the front of my dress, watching to see if I'll flinch. Two of them are filming on their phones, slate-angled, not pretending they aren't.
"Sutherland — call Crew. Tell him to come pick up his pet."
I dial.
The first call: voicemail.
The second call: declined within a ring.
The third call he picks up.
Behind him, Cass: don't touch me.
Crew, irritated past his patience: "Ren, can you stop calling?"
I make my voice as soft as I can.
"My stomach hurts."
"Then go to urgent care."
The line cuts.
The booth erupts.
"Did he just send you to urgent care?"
"Crew told her to go to Cedars, on a Friday night."
A man slides into the booth on my left side. He has cologne on his throat like wet leaves. He puts his hand on my chin and turns my face toward him.
I close my fingers around a half-empty bottle of Pappy.
Subject — do not respond to bystander escalation. Penalty event will trigger on bound contestant.
I stare at his face. I weigh the bottle. If I bring this down on his temple, Cass goes into V-fib in a hospital bed at Cedars.
His thumb brushes my lip.
The booth door bangs open.
Cass is in the doorway. Behind her, the Soho House general manager, plus two security in black polos, plus Crew, jacket open, looking like a man who had to drive across town in twenty minutes.
There is a fresh red scratch down Crew's right cheekbone.
Cass crosses the room. She picks up an empty wine bottle off the next table. She brings it down full strength on the floor next to my would-be admirer's loafer. Glass explodes around his ankles.
"Whose hand was on her face?"
Nobody says anything.
She pulls me up by the wrist. Gentle on the burn. Brutal on the room.
Crew, from the doorway: "She came here on her own."
Cass turns to him.
"You told her to come."
"So?"
Cass crosses the few feet between them. She does not hesitate. She slaps him.
The room ceases breathing.
Crew's face turns slow. His eyes go flat.
I expect him to grab her jaw. I expect him to grab her throat.
He doesn't.
He touches his lip. He wipes a thin smear of blood off the corner with one knuckle.
"Did that get it out of your system?"
Cass, ice: "No."
A push lands at my chest.
Male Lead — Bombshell Fixation: 78%.
I am leaning against the wall, stomach still spiking. I smile through it anyway.
He is starting his fall.
Crew's obsession with Cass arrives faster than we modeled.
He starts showing up outside her building before sunrise. Flowers. A Lexus with a bow on the hood. A vintage Cartier she returns by courier the next day. He has a producer-girlfriend wrap a Birkin for her. She has the producer take it back.
He turns the heat on me.
I am at the Thorne Media building with a thermal carrier of lentil soup — production has him in the edit bay on a thirty-hour cut — and he is in the lobby waiting for me.
He flicks the carrier out of my hand. The soup spills across the polished concrete.
"What did you say to her?"
"Nothing."
"She never used to be like this with me."
I look down at the orange spill. "Crew, she's just blunt."
He looks at me a long time. "You know her well?"
The Feed pings a yellow warning, soft.
Cass walks out of the elevator just in time to catch the question. She loops my arm through hers with the warmth I have not been allowed to show in three months.
"Of course I know her. I love Ren. Is that allowed?"
Crew's pupils contract.
"You love her?"
Cass tilts her head. The smile is light.
"More than I've ever pretended to love you."
Crew's face goes through three colors. I pull my arm back fast — the Devotion script requires me to be the panicked simp, not the smug one — and let my voice get high.
"Crew. It's not what you think."
He laughs. Quiet. Bitter.
"Wren. You had this in you the whole time."
He leans in, voice down, the way men lean in when they think a small audience makes them safe.
"You say you love me, and behind the curtain you're using Cass to fight your fights."
I open my mouth.
Cass steps in front of me.
"Crew. Don't flatter yourself. Ren loves you because she's blind. She's not guilty of anything else."
It is a great line. It is also dangerous.
Crew's hand closes on Cass's wrist.
"Come with me."
She doesn't pull free. She looks at his hand. "You're hurting me."
His hand drops.
Male Lead — Bombshell Tenderness Index: 83%.
Cass turns. She walks into the elevator. The doors start to slide.
Before they meet, she catches my eye.
It is the look we use for go.
The second story beat is here.